Edward Said's Thesis On Orientalism

Said´s thesis on Orientalism (1978) and proposes that farang is an Occidentalising project conceived and conducted through Siam´s constantly changing historical and cultural experiences with and against the West. Edward Said is well known for his work on colonialism and orientalism in which he criticizes how knowledge about the Orient has been shaped. He directly challenged what Euro-American scholars traditionally referred to as "Orientalism", which is an entrenched structure of thought, a pattern of making certain generalizations about the part of the world known as the Orient. Orientalism is a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient´s special place in European-Western experience. It has helped to define Europe

Academic and public discourses around the construction of masculinities made them appear as invariant, fixed, static, and normal. However, although masculine dominance is almost always universal, there are multiple forms of masculinities in different cultures and within a given society (2005: 40,43). Neither masculinity nor femininity are monolithic and unchanging categories and which attributes count as masculine or feminine depends on circumstances and is subject to change and struggle. Masculinities are constructed in a field of power and men´s power over women is relatively straightforward. Nonetheless, Hooper (2001: 43) notes that not all men benefit equally from male dominance, nor do all women suffer equally. Connell argues that there are many masculinities and feminities in existence at the same time, but there are dominant patterns of masculinity, that operate at the level of the whole society (Connell 1987: 183-188). The concept of hegemonic masculinity is derived from the theory of cultural hegemony by Gramsci (1971), which analyzes the power relations among the social classes of a society. In Gramsci´s terms, hegemony means the ideological predominance of bourgeois values and norms over the subordinate classes, which accept them as normal. In this gender hierarchy,

In light of Western countries´ critique of polygyny, which extended into the critique against prostitution, men´s gendered identities became a cause of concern and living up to the standards of Western nations became a central theme when Siam fought for sovereign status and international respect. Before colonial time, Siam´s politically and economically powerful classes practiced polygyny, which was an integral part of national and international politics in which women played an important role in consolidating ties between rulers and providing a bond in a state and inter-state system (Jeffrey 2002: 4). European and American observers interpreted polygyny as sexual slavery and sexual perversion as they understood the purpose of the practice as exclusively a sexual outlet for monarchs rather than seeing its wider role in political alliance formation and integration. Within the ideology of nineteenth-century colonial modernity, modernity was associated with a monogamous family structure, which was reflected in a legal standard that was monogamous and heterosexual. A society that did not abide by this standard was not considered fully modern (Loos 2006: 7). Polygyny was abolished shortly after absolutist rule in Thailand ended, however, Bao (2008) argues that it was only done to improve Thailand´s image internationally and it